Mobilized to carry on the war were 42.2 million on the Allied side. On the side of the Central Powers, 22.8 millions. The total: 65 million. 12 million of those mobilized were Russian, 11 million were Germans, 8.4 million were French, 8 million were from the British Empire. From Austro-Hungary came 7.8 million, from Italy, 5.6 million. Turkey furnished 2.9 million, Bulgaria 1.2 million; 4.4 million came from the United States; 0.8 million from Japan. Lesser numbers came from other countries. Except for Spain, the largest contributions of war conscripts came from the countries with the largest populations. With the exception of Spain, all of the great powers of Europe provided the "cannon fodder"; the human beings which Europe's "great powers" assembled to take part in this profligate orgy of mass murder which went on for more than four years, from July 1914 until November 1918. Body count reports and "estimates" give the total number of human beings murdered in the four year period as 8,538,315. (The legal definition of "murder" is killing, not accidentally but with the intention of taking life.) This figure of 8.5 million murdered human adults, most of them in the prime of life, refers to the murdered bodies that were recovered and disposed of. In addition there were "prisoners" and "missing." As the 1914-18 war proceeded it became less a series of combats between human beings; more and more it was a war of machines such as battleships, tanks, big guns and by war's end, of airplanes. Human beings drew up the plans, made the blueprints, shifted the gears, pushed the buttons. Their efforts were supplemented and multiplied by the killing power of physics, chemistry and mechanics brought to the task of wholesale murder, which produced 8.5 million dead human bodies. "Prisoners and missing" accounted for 7,750,000 additional human beings. Many of them were torn to shreds and smithereens by the gigantic concentration of mechanical and explosive power, designed, constructed and transported to the European battlefields for the express purpose of carrying on this month-long and year-long collective endeavor to take as much life as possible and destroy as much property as possible while war declarations authorized and legalized mass murder and wholesale destruction. Not all victims of the hideous 1914-18 blood bath were killed. "Wound casualties" numbered 12.8 million among the Allies; 8.4 million among the boys, young men and adults mobilized by the Central Powers. Some of the wounded were crippled for life. Some were less severely injured, but all 22.2 million were more or less severely handicapped when they stood up to face the rigors of civilian life at war's end. All were denied the possibility of living normal, productive, creative, satisfying lives.